The Narrows - Michael Connelly [65]
Dei shook her head.
“I don’t have the people for all of this. I can’t spend my time watching this guy.”
“You want me to keep tabs on him?” Rachel asked.
“You volunteering?”
“I’m looking for something to do. So, yeah, I’m volunteering.”
“You know, before nine-eleven and Homeland Security, we used to get whatever we needed. Bagging serials were the best headlines the bureau got. Now it’s terrorists twenty-four-seven and we can’t even get overtime.”
Rachel noted how Dei pointedly did not say whether she wanted her to check up on Bosch or not. A nice way to have deniability if something went wrong. She decided that once back at the field office she would get Dei alone and get her to run a check on whether Bosch really had a home in Las Vegas. She’d try to find out what he was up to and keep a loose watch on him.
She looked out her window and down at the black asphalt ribbon that cut through the desert. They were following it back to the city. At that same moment she saw a black Mercedes-Benz SUV heading in the same direction. It was dirty from off-roading in the desert. She knew it was Bosch making his way to Vegas. Then she noticed the drawing on the roof of the Mercedes. He had used a rag or something to draw a happy face in the white dust on the roof. The drawing made her smile, too.
Dei’s voice came in through the earphones.
“What is it, Rachel? What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing. I’m just thinking about something.”
“Yeah, I wish I could smile knowing that there might be a psycho-agent out there waiting to put a plastic bag over my head.”
Rachel looked at Dei, annoyed by such a snide and brutal remark. Dei apparently saw something in her eyes.
“Sorry. I just think you better start taking this more seriously.”
Rachel looked at her until Dei had to look away.
“You really think I’m not serious about this?”
“I know you are. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Rachel looked back down at the I-15 freeway. They were long past the black Mercedes. Bosch was gone, far behind them.
She studied the terrain for a while. It was all so different yet all the same. A moonscape carpet of rock and sand. She knew it was full of life but all life was hidden. The predators were underground, waiting to come out at night.
“Ladies and gentlemen?” the pilot’s voice said in her ear. “Switch to channel three. You’ve got an incoming call.”
Rachel had to take her headset off to figure out how to change the frequency. She thought that the headset had a stupid design. When she put the set back on she heard Brass Doran’s voice. She was talking rapid-fire the way Rachel remembered she always did whenever something big came up.
“— cent integrity. It definitely came from him.”
“What?” Rachel said. “I didn’t hear any of that.”
“Brass,” Dei said, “start again.”
“I said we got a match from the bite mark database. With the gum. It’s got ninety-five percent integrity, which is one of the highest matches I’ve ever seen.”
“Who?” Rachel asked.
“Rach, you are going to love this. Ted Bundy. That gum was chewed by Ted Bundy.”
“That’s impossible,” Dei said. “First of all, Bundy’s been dead for years, long before any of these men went missing. And he was never known to have gotten to Nevada or California or to have targeted men. Something’s wrong with the data, Brass. It’s a bad read or —”
“We ran it twice. Both times it came up Bundy.”
“No,” Rachel said. “It’s right.”
Dei turned and looked back at her. Rachel was thinking about Bundy. The ultimate serial killer. Handsome, smart and vicious. He was a biter, too. He had been the only one to really give her the creeps. The others she just felt a loathing and disgust for.
“How do you know it’s right, Rachel?”
“I just know. Twenty-five years ago Backus helped set up the VICAP database. Brass remembers. Over the next eight years the data was collected. Agents from the unit were sent out to interview every serial killer and rapist who was incarcerated in the country. That was before I was there but even later, when I was there, we kept doing interviews and adding to the base. Bundy was interviewed